763.72/3761¾
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: This is the passage in my address30b which should give form to the Resolution of which we were speaking over the ‘phone this evening:
“I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.”
I would be very much obliged if you would be kind enough to have the Resolution drawn in the sense of these words.
I am putting this in writing rather than give it to you orally over the ‘phone because I know you will wish to have before you just the language I am to use.
Faithfully Yours,
- For text of the address, see Foreign Relations, 1917, supp. 1, p. 195.↩